Stardew Valley+ is now available on Apple Arcade. If you have a subscription to Apple’s gaming service or if you pay for Apple One, you can play the massively popular farming simulator for free. So maybe bid farewell to your free time (and possibly your loved ones?) right now.
If you’re already played it, there’s never a bad time to start another run on the Apple Arcade version. If you haven’t played it, Stardew Valley is a farming simulator designed entirely by one person, Eric Barone, under the moniker of ConcernedApe. Blending the retro appeal of an old-school pixel art RPG with a surprisingly deep (and still evolving) gameplay system, it goes far beyond tending your virtual crops to include making connections with your neighbors (who all have their own quirks), fishing, mining for ore, and even battling monsters in the surrounding forest. Though you can certainly accomplish a lot, it has no real ending, which means you can play it forever if you’re so inclined (and many people are).
The Apple Arcade version of Stardew Valley includes all the latest story content, but doesn’t support multiplayer and offers no in-app purchases. The game should remain on Apple Arcade for the foreseeable future, so you have enough time to play it, but it’s worth remembering that games do leave the service every once in a while. (If you can imagine getting so into it that you would balk at losing your save data, you might want to opt for a console version—it’s available on pretty much every platform.
If you don’t have a subscription to Apple Arcade, you can visit Best Buy’s website and claim a free trial for up to four months, whether or not you’ve had a free trial in the past. That should be plenty of time to get to know Stardew Valley+. If you really like the game, you can either pay for Apple Arcade to keep going, or buy Stardew Valley ($5) outright.
Apple Arcade has been dropping some other big hits as of late. The service recently added Ridiculous Fishing EX, Slay the Spire+, and LEGO Duplo World+, all of which are worth paying for, and definitely worth trying out for free on Apple Arcade. Hello Kitty Island Adventure is also releasing this month, on July 28.
Apple Arcade titles also receive regular content updates, so Stardew Valley should be well-positioned for any future modifications. The following games have recently received significant updates on Apple Arcade: